Here is my list:
- pdf -
pdftk
- images -
imagemagick
utilities - audio/video -
ffmpeg
- documents -
libreoffice --headless
mode, alsopandoc
- download files -
wget
andcurl
, alsoytdlp
for youtube, reddit - cloud storage -
rclone
Rsync for moving files and backing up.
The ultimate it-just-works CLI tool.
Although I have never understood why it’s called
rsync
, because you need to add--recursive
to make it actually sync a file tree, which is what it does best.I think
rsync
is short for remote syncAmazing!
find -exec
is essential to process multiple files7z
handles wildcards inside afind -exec
so you can save 200 lines of sh compliancempv
plays online media since it uses yt-dlpxournal
for fake form-filling on PDFs - ugly and unintuitive but gets the job doneimg2pdf
- does what it says on the tinranger
for managing files and launching stuff - not the coolest kid on the block but this is the single most impressive terminal app I have used in recent years, the key bindings and commands and defaults are so crazily intuitive that I hardly ever even need to consult the manual
If you use Firefox, it added pdf editing in since 106. I like it compared to xournal. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/106.0/releasenotes
I use:
qpdf
for mucking around with pdfs, reordering, selecting pages, combining them, etc.ffmpeg
for video and audio sicing and transcoding. Usually encompassing a command in a script because I forget the precise params every time ;pnvim
for anything like Markdown (which can be converted to other things like LaTeX or pdf or html, sometimes in multiple stages)imagemagick
for simple image conversion stuff.wget
for downloads ^.^youtube-dl
oryt-dlp
for grabbing youtube stuff.
I use most of these that you listed, except that I don’t use office apps at all, and do all my documents using LaTeX in
neovim
.Also, I have small helper scrips for pdf manipulation for tasks that I do regularly, like making my handwritten notes ready for printing at my office since I don’t like the algo my office printer uses to convert them to B&W. I also use
sejda-console
for merging PDFs as it has nice options for manipulating TOC during the merge.Another nice utility is
ffpb
which is basically a wrapper aroundffmpeg
that gives it a nice progress bar.Aria2c is the best downloader for large files. It also supports torrents.
You can also use ghostscript (
gs
) or the image magickconvert
with PDF.I use
rsync
quite often andssh
as well.pdfcrop
(commonly included with LaTeX) for cropping margins - it cuts the pdf down to its contents then adds a margin of your choosing, extremely useful for forcing academic papers to have consistent margins,pdfcrop --margins 72 *pdf here*
will create a document with a ~1in margin all around (it uses bp as its units)vips
for resizing/converting images - it’s a bit faster and lighter than imagemagick in my experience, although the main reason I use it instead of imagemagick is just because I like playing around with stuff I haven’t used before :) It has an officially supported python binding too
I’d add:
- ghostscript - with some basic perl scripts, works great for pdf flattening/compressing, merging, splitting, adding bookmarks etc.
- poppler - pdfseparate, sometimes pdfunite
- zathura - pdf viewing
- feh - images
- sshfs - prefer it to rclone
- cheat
- emacs - org-mode, latex, dired/wdired, capture, eshell, vterm, tramp
- mc/midnight commander
https://github.com/WyattBlue/auto-editor - automatically editing video and audio by analyzing a variety of methods, most notably audio loudness
https://github.com/shssoichiro/oxipng, https://pngquant.org/ and https://github.com/RazrFalcon/svgcleaner for optimizing images
I download files with axel
Thanks! i’ll try it out
For audio files
sox
andbeets
are my live saver.Using
lf
, a file manager like ranger. Written in Go.@antihero I use ffmpeg to extract frames from images. Yt-dlp to download youtube videos. Rmlint, to remove duplicates. Gallery-dl to sometimes download from sites like instagram or twitter & finally mpd / ncmpcpp to listen to music…
- convert - convert between image formats as well as resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample, etc. Almost nothing it can’t do.
IIRC,
convert
is just an alias toimagemagick
.you recalled correctly.
TIL. Thank you kind strangers.